Clan of the Cave Bear (3 Stars)

Amazon Friday #6

I'm starting to wonder whether I should bother to number my Amazon Friday films. The order in which I watch them has no significance. Added to that, I almost made a mistake today by calling this film the fifth. I corrected it before publishing the post, but it would have been humiliating.

I've wanted to watch this film for sometime. It stars Daryl Hannah, one of the world's most beautiful actresses, which is reason enough to watch it. It was made in 1985, and it's based on a children's book by Jean Marie Auel. However, the film has been adapted for adult audiences. It has a few scenes that aren't suitable for children.

The film deals with the meeting of two pre-historic races, the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons. The Neanderthals are now extinct, and the Cro-Magnons are the ancestors of modern day man. The Cro-Magnons seem to be a new race in the film. We only see two Cro-Magnons: Ayla and her mother.

In the opening scene a woman dies in an earthquake, leaving her five-year-old daughter Ayla alone. Ayla is injured by a lion and almost dies, when she's discovered by a tribe of Neanderthals. They don't want to help her because she looks strange – Ayla has blond hair – but the tribe's healer, Iza, adopts Ayla as her daughter.

Over the years, as Ayla grows to adulthood, she's accepted as one of the tribe, but Broud, the son of the tribe's leader, hates her because she's different. He repeatedly rapes her, which is interesting in itself. He hates her, but he lusts for her. Rape is performed as an act of aggression in order to humiliate his victim. The others in the tribe know about it, and sometimes he even rapes her while they're watching, but they allow it. In those days men were allowed to do whatever they wanted with women.

Ayla is different to the tribe in more ways than one. The blond hair is what's most apparent, but she's also more intelligent than them, and she's a skilled hunter. The latter causes her to be cast out of the tribe. Women aren't allowed to hunt; their job is to cook, have babies and be raped.

The film has some good ideas, but ultimately I was disappointed. It can easily be applied to today's society. It shows racism and sexism, admittedly in an exaggerated form, but the principles still apply today. I was disappointed to see that Ayla didn't take revenge. She hated what Broud did to her, but she accepted it. I would have liked to see more of a twentieth century attitude. But the biggest problem was the dialogue. The whole film is in grunts, with some words repeated often enough for the viewer to guess what they mean. In cases where it might be too difficult to understand, there's a narrator explaining what's happening in voiceover. That's horrible! They should have recorded the dialogue in English and got rid of the narrator.

The film was a box office flop. In 2015 a television series based on the adventures of Ayla was planned, but it never got past the pilot. That's a shame. The story itself has promise. It just needs to be better made.

Success Rate:  - 9.0

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